Dannsa with First Harvest

9 Jun 2006 in Dance & Drama, Highland

Stepping Out

SANDRA ROBERTSON sets the scene as Dannsa and First Harvest prepare to collaborate on a Scottish Arts Council Tune Up Tour.

DANNSA and First Harvest first got together at the Ceòlas Festival in South Uist last year, although everyone involved in the tour has known everyone else for years.

Iain MacDonald of First Harvest is the artistic director of Ceòlas, and most of the Dannsa members are tutors at the festival. The festival was set up by Hamish Moore, and his son, Fin Moore, is now a core member of Dannsa as our permanent piper, so that’s another connection there.

Last year Iain asked if we would do half of an evening with First Harvest at the festival. That went down well and we both enjoyed it, but we each did our own set and that was it. We were all interested in taking it further, and a tour seemed a logical extension, so we applied for the Tune Up programme, but this time with a more collaborative show.

Tune Up encourages that kind of thing, and getting that funding allowed us do something that we couldn’t justify economically without that support. Taking this many people on the road is expensive, and the logistics are more complex as well. We have the luxury of a tour manager, which is something we have never had before, and we are all very relieved about that!

We tend to work from ideas that are already there, and then put our own steps to them

First Harvest will play the first half of the show, and Dannsa the second, but there will be some collaboration between the two groups in each half, and we’ll get together to do a joint piece at the end, probably on ‘The Spinning Reel’, which is the first piece Dannsa ever performed.
So there will be interchanges, it won’t be just two separate performances. We have quite a lot of performers on board – Dannsa have the four dancers, myself, Caroline Reagh, Frank McConnell and Donal Brown, plus Fin Moore on pipes, Gabe McVarish on fiddle, and Gaelic singer Liz McLean.

First Harvest has the two Iains, Iain MacFarlane on fiddle and Iain MacDonald on whistles and pipes, with Ross Martin on guitar and Gaelic singer Kathleen MacInnes. Kathleen has also worked with us in the past, and the two singers will be doing something together at some point, and Ross and Gabe play together quite a bit, so there are lots of possibilities for collaborations.

Frank and Fin have been getting their heads together with Iain MacDonald about the whole balance of the evening. Both of us are used to doing a full evening show, and we obviously have to cut that back. We are looking at ways of ensuring there is plenty of variety in the programme, so that it’s not just a succession of the same people on stage for each piece.

We have worked out a programme that we feel has quite a nice flow to it, and I know First Harvest are working on getting some new sets together. Each group is responsible for the flow and feel of their own set.

We have worked up some new material for the tour, including a set called ‘The Skye Collection’ based around tunes from that collection, and some Hebridean dances that aren’t done very often. They are a kind of cross between step dance and Highland dance, with quite a lot of percussive elements. I’m from Barra originally, and there was a bit of a revival of the style around the Barra Feis about 20 years or so ago, but it’s still not seen that widely outside the islands.

We will also be revisiting a number of dances from our existing repertoire. We have done ‘The Spinning Reel’ quite a bit, for example, but it is still one of our favourites. We tend to use existing dances, but then put our own slant on it.

In the case of ‘The Spinning Reel’, for example, we used the old quadrilles as an inspiration, and there is a fleeting moment in the dance when we go into it, but the rest is ours. We tend to work from ideas that are already there, and then put our own steps to them.

Putting steps to the waulking songs with Mary Anne Kennedy was something that hadn’t really been done much at all, for example. I’m very keen on them, and I sing a bit in a local group here in Kingussie.

We all tend to chip ideas into the pot, and we work the thing out in a collaborative way rather than having someone doing definite choreography duties, although we have just been awarded funding from the Scottish Arts Council to commission work from two choreographers, Mats Melin and Morag Johnston, who is originally from Skye. They will both be creating dances for us, and that is the first time we have worked that way.

Donal Brown is standing in for Mats in the group while he is teaching for a further year in Limerick. Donal also plays flute, and he’ll be doing something with Iain MacDonald at some point in the show, and Fin Moore will actually be doing a wee bit of dancing – he’s not bad!

Our formal aim in Dannsa is to bring traditional dance into the 21st century, but we also feel that we want to keep it in its tradition as well, we don’t want to lose that along the way. It’s not so much a matter of historical preservation as of finding ways that we can carry on the tradition into our own time, but also bring it forward and make it usable for us.

Dannsa with First Harvest perform at the Craigmonie Centre, Drumnadrochit, 10 June; Universal Hall, Findhorn, 11 June; Glenuig Hall, 14 June; Macphail Centre, Ullapool, 15 June; An Lanntair, Stornoway, 16 June; Ardross Hall, 17 June.

(Sandra Robertson spoke to Kenny Mathieson)